Web CMS Comparison: Plone vs.

Ken Wasetis - Contextual [email protected] twitter: @ctxlken irc: ctxlken

www.contextualcorp.com

1 2 Why Compare?

To Learn To Advise: Be able to compare/contrast in Web CMS discussion To Improve Every problem doesn’t require a hammer

http://www.contextualcorp.com3 What is a CMS?

Database-driven Content Repository + User Interface + Content Services ------= CMS + Web ------= WCMS

http://www.contextualcorp.com4 Content Services of CMS

Version Control / Audit Trail & Rollback Capabilities Locking (check-in/check-out) Workflow / Approval Process Review Lists and Notifications Content Types - Built-in and/or Custom Fine-grained Permissions Searching/Indexing of Content *Plone is a Web CMS (WCMS) Tool (CMS for managing websites/web content)

http://www.contextualcorp.com5 Content Versioning / Audit Trail

http://www.contextualcorp.com6 Additional CMS Features

Simple WYSIWYG Visual Editor / Rich Text Editing In-context Editing (sometimes) Content Preview with Theme Applied Accessibility (WCAG, Section 508, etc.) Visual Comparison of Revision Differences Management of Metadata (tags, keywords, pub dates, author, credits, other) Sitemap and Taxonomy Management Scheduling of Publishing/Expiration of Content

http://www.contextualcorp.com7 Built-in Search

http://www.contextualcorp.com8 Typical Add-on Features/Modules

Web Forms Slideshows Calendar Microsites Faceted Navigation/Search Embed Videos RSS Feeds/Syndication SEO Enhancements Email Campaign Management / Integration (with MailChimp, others) CRM/Salesforce Integration Content Migration Tools

http://www.contextualcorp.com9 Contextual Editing

http://www.contextualcorp.com10 Additional CMS Features

Extensible (available add-on modules or custom dev) Allows for Custom Themes SEO-Friendly (helps with search engine rankings) Portlet Management (arrange widgets on page) Dashboard (recent edit/publish activity at-a-glance) Useful Built-in Templates (page, news, event listings, thumbnail layouts, etc.) Plays Nicely With Others (SSO, LDAP/AD, Salesforce, legacy Oracle/SQL Server DBs) Provides Maintenance Scripts/Features (Database backup/restore, restarts, etc.) Reasonable Upgrade Options

http://www.contextualcorp.com11 Social Publishing

User-generated Content Forums Blogs Comments Twitter/FB Feeds Organic Groups/Birds of a Feather Moderation of UG Content (or not)

http://www.contextualcorp.com12 Self-Reflection: What Do You Want to Be?

Web CMS Portal Framework Web App Framework Intranet Platform Marketing Platform Digital Business / eBusiness Platform Mobile CMS Other?

http://www.contextualcorp.com13 Core Principals & Features: Plone vs. Drupal

Plone: Pure Web CMS Features - Comparable features to enterprise commercial CMS tools - Workflow, Versioning, In-Context Editing, Permissions, Collections, Search, etc. - Security, Performance - Open - IP owned by foundation - Many core committers Drupal: Social Publishing - Opposite initial target - Let outsiders create content (lack of formal permissions/workflow) - Syndication - Campaign/Activist tool (DFA, OFA, etc.) - Marketing sites / theme proliferation - CiviCRM - Open - IP owned by Dries - Few core committers (compare these projects at http://ohloh.net )

http://www.contextualcorp.com14 Plone Project Velocity

http://www.contextualcorp.com15 Drupal Project Velocity

http://www.contextualcorp.com16 Convergence: Core Additions vs. Add-ons

Plone: - Better comment management/moderation/workflow in core - Improved built-in Syndication options with 4.3 (Atom, etc.) - FB/Twitter Login add-on - FB/Twitter/MailChimp/Salesforce Add-ons - Dexterity (custom content types via web GUI, now) Drupal: - Workflow add-on (still not as robust) - CCK added to core (custom content types) - Still have to download/install the visual editor you want (baffling to me)

Twitter: @shmcmahon “OH: in terms of framework, Drupal 8 is our Plone 3”

http://www.contextualcorp.com17 Lots of Similarities to User

Web GUI with WYWIGY Editor Toolbar for Admins/Editors Edit forms with fields for metadata Control Portlets / Blocks Control What Shows in Navigation Can Switch Theme via Configuration Area Control Options in WYSIWYG User Dashboard

http://www.contextualcorp.com18 Convergence Summary

Content Types: Drupal has caught up quite a bit by including in core Web 2.0 Overlays: Plone provides to editors, but should apply more to Site Setup area In-Context Editing: Similar experiences now; Plone might still be a little ahead Navigation/Links: Drupal’s ugly/ambiguous ‘node#’ URLs can be replaced with friendlier and more meaningful and SEO-friendly URLs now, but takes user action/ thought Workflow: Drupal is still lacking Web Services: Drupal is ahead, by including RESTful web service wizard (downsides, of course, if you don’t setup separate web service hub instance) Collections: Built into Plone and still hard to beat; powerful content reuse feature LDAP (SSO) Integration: Drupal’s is said to be lacking (by analysts) Versioning: Plone’s is more robust

http://www.contextualcorp.com19 Convergence Summary

Upgrade Path/Options: - Plone’s one-click upgrade has consistently surpassed Drupal and others - Drupal upgrade path from 6 to 7 was said to be miserable by users - Drupal 8 with major backend architecture changes is out in 2013; upgrade path? - Both Plone and Drupal add-ons still require active community or changes by you for upgrades - Custom add-ons are up to you, but both communities provide recipes to modify Versioning: Plone’s is more robust Authentication: Plone seems to have more Pluggable Auth Service options (that work)

http://www.contextualcorp.com20 System Analogies / Similarities Config Files: Drupal .info files similar to Plone .zcml and profiles .xml settings Templates: PHP vs TAL - Drupal has an overrides behavior based on naming convention; Plone has path ‘layers’ + using same name to provide for overrides Toolbar: - As of Drupal 7, it now has one; more similar to Plone in-context editing now - With Plnoe, you can install plone.app.toolbar, if you like it at the top as Drupal has it - Easier to add links to user-specific shortcuts menu in Drupal - Have to go into ZMI -> portal_actions to add to user-actions list of links in Plone Dashboard: - Similar in many ways - Plone provides more stock portlets to drop-in - Drupal provides slicker drag/drop placement of portlets/blocks into node areas Content Types: - Can design them via web GUI in both tools now; in core with both now - Surprised at lack of built-in types with Drupal, though; just Page and Article (similar to Plone News Item with listing/preview image field) http://www.contextualcorp.com21 Finally - Screen Shots of Drupal

http://www.contextualcorp.com22 Drupal: Editing Page

http://www.contextualcorp.com23 Drupal: Editing Page - Link Handling

http://www.contextualcorp.com24 Drupal: Add-on ‘Modules’

http://www.contextualcorp.com25 Drupal: Configuration Panel

http://www.contextualcorp.com26 Drupal: Content Types

http://www.contextualcorp.com27 Drupal: Dashboard

http://www.contextualcorp.com28 Drupal: Built-in Help

http://www.contextualcorp.com29 Drupal Weaknesses Workflow: - go to https://drupal.org/node/369988 (Getting Started With Drupal page) and search for 'workflow'... nada - Workflow module can be downloaded/installed, but has 127 open issues and 58 open bugs - is still an afterthought in Drupal, but wouldn’t be surprised if added to core laterSecurity: - The Good: Drupal has a Security Team and the ‘core’ has few vulnerabilities - The Bad: You can’t do much with only the lightweight ‘core’ - You will need/use many add-ons and many are insecure and/or don’t scale well - Search the CVE vulnerabilities database for ‘drupal’ or for ‘plone’ and compare - ~4-6 vulnerabilities per month for Drupal (~ 3/year for Plone) See: https://drupal.org/security/contrib for latest list Drupal vuln alerts See: http://plone.org/products/plone/security/advisories/plone-securit y-advisories for Plone vuln alerts

http://www.contextualcorp.com30 Drupal Strengths

Similar to Plone: Open, Community-driven, Collaboration Admin UI has More Polish (nice overlays, even on Site Setup type panels) Larger Install Base / Market Share than Plone Easy to find cheap PHP/MySQL hosting PHP (more devs; easier entry for designers with HTML skills) Applications: Social/Collaboration sites with syndication and commenting/discussion

http://www.contextualcorp.com31 Drupal Weaknesses PHP: - Possibly the most hacked websites out there (Wordpress, fall into category) - Only included true O-O (object-oriented) features a few years ago - Is still not as robust in performance as other options Available Talent Pool: - True of any CMS tool worth its weight, though - with capabilities comes complexity (Plone, Fatwire, CQ, Vignette, Sitecore, etc.) Project Management by Community (basically leaning on Acquia for direction) Performance: - Out-of-box performance is much slower than Plone and Drupal 7 is even slower than Drupal 6 - Drupal 8 is a redo of much of the backend framework; will it be faster or slower? - Experienced Drupal integrators are needed to get around the performance issues, but that is common among many web software platforms

http://www.contextualcorp.com32 Drupal Weaknesses - as by Dries

Rudimentary Authoring Experience In-Context Editing Experience that Lags Plone Aging Web Framework (being replaced in Drupal 8 with Symfony) Small Available Talent Pool

http://www.contextualcorp.com33 Future Drupal

Good Strategic Direction to handle Mobile - Responsive Web Design (more built-in capabilities expected; more themes available) - Native (iOS, Android) via RESTful web services (already built-in somewhat) More OOB Features / Bigger Core - Want to be able to do more out-of-box - Perhaps not require downloading of your favorite editor, or of workflow? D8 Still in Development: - https://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core Painful Upgrades on the horizon - After one year of Drupal 7, 90% of add-on modules were yet incompatible

http://www.contextualcorp.com34 Plone Strengths

Very Solid Architecture and Engineering Security Performance Repeatable Deployments (easy to apply same config in Dev, Staging, Prod) Pluggable (Auth, XML-RPC, SOAP) Workflow Versioning Authoring Experience (in-context editing; good wysiwyg built-in) Navigation Menu/Link Management SEO (due to automatic quality link generation)

http://www.contextualcorp.com35 Plone Weaknesses

Fewer Robust Social features/add-ons Not RESTful out-of-box AJAX layer being reworked (removal of KSS; completely JQuery based) Less market/mind share Market things that abundance of PHP devs means many Drupal/Joomla/WP devs Fewer affordable hosting choices Few one-click startup/hosting options (but exist) Not as embraced by design agencies (natural marketing pros who could push Plone)

http://www.contextualcorp.com36 Drupal Costs vs. Plone Costs

About the same, really ‘Professional’ development shops will charge about the same dev/consulting rate ‘Professional’ hosting with 24/7 support (by humans), etc. is about the same: See: http://www.acquia.com/cloud-pricing#hardware=56&storage=106&subscription=129563

Other/Free Options available, though: See: https://www.drupalgardens.com/pricing Some free/very cheap options for non-profits with Plone too Neither are as cheap as Wordpress to host, because they actually do a bit more All are at least ‘good’ systems - depends on needs and so does hosting

http://www.contextualcorp.com37 Summary

Both are Accomplished, Mature, Improving Tools (Over 10 Years Old Each) Both offer Good/Easy Editing Experience Both offer Configuration TTW (Through The Web) Both Tools Need More Experts Available

Plone provides more ‘true CMS’ features OOB Drupal provides more ‘social publishing’ OOB Drupal UI has a little more polish, but fewer capabilities (workflow, collections, auth) Plone OOB Performance is Superior Plone Security Record is Superior

http://www.contextualcorp.com38 Which One Is Better?

Depends On Your Needs Are you building a highly social website with lots of user/visitor/member-generated content? Probably Drupal Are you building a site for a public agency or company with many regulations to comply with? Probably Plone Other than those obvious segments, there is a lot of overlap, so tool choice could come down to preference of: - Coding Language (Python for Plone vs. PHP for Drupal) - Hosting Options - Available Consultants/Developers Both tools are very capable and continue to advance

http://www.contextualcorp.com39 Recommendation

Well, I’m a bit biased ;) Have a capable internal team that is expert in the technology Partner with a consultant that has done these projects many times Both tools are good enough that implementation team will be the key

http://www.contextualcorp.com40 Ken Wasetis [email protected] twitter . irc . skype: ctxlken

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